Sometimes we give up. Sometimes on SAR missions we return day after day, then week after week, without finding our lost person. The search is called off. Volunteers leave the scene in quiet resignation. Families leave the scene in despair. In the last six months here...
In November of 2020, a solo snow-shoer became lost while descending the Muir Snowfield on Mount Rainier. In the dark, ranger search teams climbed up in a snow storm, but were unable to locate him. The next morning, more search teams arrived, and in mid-afternoon the...
My very first article was published in a professional magazine (HRMagazine) almost exactly thirty years ago and it was titled: The Case For Valuing Diversity. At the time I was a young, idealistic first woman executive in a male-dominated utility and someone committed...
Search and rescue folks, like first responders, maintain an emotional distance from the pain of the families, but we still need to check ourselves now and then.
Pretend for a moment that you’re a “fake psychic.” Not a real psychic, who can find lost persons after receiving visions from deities, angels, or bad cases of indigestion, but a “fake psychic” – you’re just making stuff up. To advertise your special powers, you’re...
This Summer we have seen a huge number of searches in Washington State as hikers are getting tired of staying isolated and flock to the mountains in huge numbers, many unprepared for our rugged mountains. Guy has kept very busy with the Washington State SAR Planning...
Many of our national parks in the U.S. contain large wilderness areas. Fifty of our national parks have designated wilderness areas, totaling over 40 million acres. Many of these wilderness areas are visited by many people every year. And every year, due to...
It’s a K9 team’s worst nightmare. The mission is over; the subject not found. Then, a day, a month, or a year later, you hear that remains were found in the area you were assigned to. Oh my God. What did we do wrong? Probably nothing. Many of us in SAR are familiar...
In my lifetime, I’ve only once called for search and rescue help, and it happens to have been for my “missing” husband Scott some ten years ago. Scott had been invited by our daughter’s boyfriend, Chris, to climb a technical route on Vesper Peak, and had gladly...
On a cold morning in February 1980, a father and son are working their way along Fly Creek, about 20 miles north of the Oregon border. Seeking promising-looking gravel, they stop here and there, digging small holes along the riverbank. The son kneels; the shovel bites...